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St
Michael, Coston

I know that some cynic will probably write
to me and tell me that it is all down to County Council
planning policies, but there is something about the way
that this area of Norfolk, so very close to the city of
Norwich, feels so very remote, that lifts the heart. It
reassures me that perhaps it will all last
beyond my time. Maybe we aren't in the last days of old
England after all.

As
for St Michael, no doubt it is its very
remoteness that has led to its redundancy, but it
is fortunate to be in the tender care of the
Churches Conservation Trust. Reading about it in
Pevsner, Mortlock and Nichols, I could not see
that it was important enough to reach the
standard required to be taken into the CCT fold
nowadays, and so it must have been fortunate to
have been declared redundant early, in the days
when the old Redundant Churches Fund still had an
evangelical zeal about preserving old buildings
just for the sake of it.

I
understand, of course, that harsh financial
decisions have to be made. But we are a rich
country - certainly, compared to the 1970s when
St Michael was made redundant - and I think that
we can afford to look after the family treasures.

St
Michael, as you will see, is a little jewel of Early
English, an unusual thing to find in Norfolk on such a
small scale. The east wall has been completely rebuilt at
some point, and Pevsner thought this had probably
happened in the late 18th century. It is not
unattractive.

Unfortunately,
despite this being a CCT church, we were unable to get
inside. Surprisingly, many CCT churches are kept locked
in Norfolk - this one is open some weekends in summer
according to the sign, but how would you know? But
the sign also says that there is a key at the only other
house in the area, the old rectory next door.

I had
recently read that one of my heroes, the writer Bill
Bryson, was now living in an old rectory in the Wymondham
area, so it was with some excitement that I picked my way
around the paddock of ducks and geese to the front door
of the large red-brick building.

Could this
be the Bryson house, I wondered? I looked for signs that
a venerable American writer might be in residence here -
a US registration on a pick-up truck, perhaps, an Iowa
State University pennant in an upstairs window, discarded
Oreo Cookies boxes by the wheelie bin - but there was
nothing. There was nobody in, either. But before anyone
heads off to Coston on an autograph hunt, I must tell you
that the kind residents of the house have since contacted
me to advise me that not only are they not Bill
Bryson, but also that it is planned for this church to be
open every day during the summer months. So, I shall go
back, and I hope that you will too. In the meantime,
Peter Stephens' photographs below show an utterly
delicious interior.

Something
Bryson would love, by the way, is the gravestone
just to the south-west of the tower; it's easy to
find, this is a tiny graveyard and there are not
many stones. It remembers Charles Capp, who died
at the age of 15 in 1886, from injury
received by a stroke from a sail of the Runhall
Mill. This stone was erected by his friends and
parishioners to perpetuate his untimely loss. He
was one of the choir of Runhall church.

It's the
sort of thing that makes you sit down and
contemplate the uncertainty of human existence,
the pain of a poor rural family losing a young
son so tragically, the sense of your own
mortality. On a nearby stone, words from the Book
of Job summed it up pretty neatly: Man that
is born of a woman is of few days and full of
trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is
cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and
continueth not...

There's
nothing like a nice day in the countryside to
cheer yourself up.